Chapter 8 Art Lover #2
with every luxury, including air-conditioning. As they crossed the Memorial Bridge, Viv, who was sitting in the back with
Bitsy, stuck her head through the cleft between the two front seats.
“Where are we going?”
“To DC,” Charlotte said.
“I know. But where in DC? You said we’d be back before the school bus, remember?”
“And we will be,” Charlotte assured her. “Provided we don’t get lost. Margaret, check the map again. What’s the best route
to Dupont Circle?”
Margaret flipped the map to the back side, which had a more detailed view of the city.
“Let’s see . . . Either Twenty-Third to New Hampshire, or Constitution to Seventeenth to Connecticut.”
“I don’t care. Just pick one.”
Charlotte smacked the heel of her hand on the horn, then pressed the gas pedal, inching toward the bumper of the Oldsmobile
in front of her.
Viv gasped. “Watch it! You’re following too close!”
“He’s driving too slow,” Charlotte countered, but eased up on the gas just the same. “Speaking of too close—Vivian, would you please sit back? You’re making me nervous.”
Viv huffed but complied. Charlotte whipped her head toward Margaret.
“Well?”
“Take Seventeenth. We can get a peek at the White House as we pass.”
“Too late. We already missed the turn.”
It was a circle, not a turn; they could have simply gone around again. But driving in city traffic seemed to unleash Charlotte’s
inner New Yorker, so Margaret didn’t argue. At this point, she just wanted to get to wherever they were going without causing
an accident.
“Twenty-Third is fine. Here, right here.”
Charlotte exited onto the street Margaret was pointing at, then immediately veered into the left lane, zipping past the plodding
Oldsmobile. Bitsy, who had been quiet for most of the journey, leaned forward, but not as far as Viv had.
“Can we drive past the White House on the way back?”
“Why?” Charlotte asked. “Haven’t you seen it before?”
“Yes. King and I spent a weekend seeing the sights when we first moved, but I’d like to go past again if we can. It’s such
a pretty day, maybe the First Family will be outside. Vice President Johnson gave Caroline a sweet Shetland pony, Macaroni,
as a present. I saw a picture of her riding on the White House lawn with the president holding the reins to lead him.”
“I’m pretty sure that was just a publicity stunt,” Charlotte said, speeding through a light that was, if not righteously red,
certainly pink. “But sure, we can drive past on the way back.”
“Thanks!” Bitsy said happily, then leaned back into her seat and let out a startled yelp.
“What is it?” Charlotte shifted her gaze to the rearview mirror. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Bitsy said in an anxious voice. “I think maybe . . . Maybe I did something to your car? I put my arm on the rest, and the window rolled down all by itself.”
Charlotte grinned. “Don’t worry, you didn’t break anything. It’s the power windows. You must have bumped the button with your
elbow or something.”
“Power windows? Wow, this car really has everything, doesn’t it?”
“Well, unless it has a bathroom,” Viv said, sticking her head between the front seats again, “we’re going to have a real problem
in about five minutes. I swear, this baby has decided to park itself directly on top of my bladder today.”
“Not to worry,” Charlotte said, pulling the sedan toward the curb. “We’re here.”
Margaret looked out the window toward a tall, gray, generic-looking building.
“Where is here?”
“The Washington Gallery of Modern Art,” Charlotte said, switching off the ignition. “And before you ask—yes, Viv, they have
a bathroom.”
* * *
While Viv scampered off to the powder room, Charlotte paid for the tickets, insisting it was her treat. Margaret and Bitsy
made their way into the first exhibit space.
The interior of the gallery was far more interesting than the exterior. Located in a large converted turn-of-the-century carriage
house, it boasted soaring ceilings, vast white walls, and clean, brilliant lighting. The wide honey-colored floor planks were
distressed enough to suggest they might be original, polished to a mirror glaze shine. The windows were clear, but the sun
shone through them, casting tilted, rectangular grids of light onto the floor and giving the rooms a cathedral-like quality—spaces
that demanded humility and hushed voices.
And indeed, during the hour that Charlotte served as their private docent, giving detailed explanations of the influences, themes, compositions, and techniques of the various works, her tone was uncharacteristically reverent.
In fact, she made only one caustic comment the whole time they were at the gallery, while reciting names of some of the artists whose works were on exhibition.
“Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns—an all-male roster. Alice Denney cofounded the gallery, and
Adelyn Breeskin is the director, but art is still a boys’ club. Girls are permitted to help pay the bills and keep things
tidy, but they’re never allowed to join,” she said with an unmistakably bitter edge that she quickly covered with a smile.
“But we can visit, which is pretty terrific. As you can see,” she said, stretching her arms wide toward the canvases on either wall,
“there is some remarkable work here.”
Viv turned her head left and right, then gave it a little shake.
“How can you tell? I mean, what’s it supposed to be? Most of them look like something my Jenny could have painted, and she’s
only five.”
The look that came over Charlotte’s face in response to Viv’s comments left Margaret with the same unease she’d felt when
they’d started wrangling at the book club meeting. But she was happily surprised when Charlotte, instead of saying something
cutting, took in a breath, held it for a count of about three, then let it out again and smiled.
“If that’s true, I’d love to buy some of Jenny’s work. Because, trust me, it’ll be worth real money someday.”
“Now, there’s a thought,” Viv said, grinning at Margaret and Bitsy.
“Modern art may appear simple at first glance, but there’s real technique involved.
As far as what it is . . .” Charlotte shrugged and turned out her hands.
“Well, that’s for you to decide. The point is less what you think it looks like than how it makes you feel.
Good art, the best art, elicits a reaction of some sort, not always a positive one.
It might make you feel peaceful or joyful or curious.
But it could also make you feel angry or ashamed or afraid.
The response will vary from person to person.
But if the piece evokes something genuine, even raw, it has fulfilled its purpose.
“Just keep that in mind as you go through the gallery,” she continued, scanning their faces. “Better yet, keep an open mind. You may find there’s more here than you realized.”
Though she wouldn’t have said so aloud, Margaret’s initial reaction to the gallery’s collection wasn’t all that different
from Viv’s.
What is it? What’s it supposed to be?
But when she took Charlotte’s advice to heart and kept herself open to what the paintings made her feel, she started to find
them interesting, if not precisely enjoyable. By the time an hour had passed, Margaret noticed that all of them were lingering
in front of the paintings, even Viv, giving them, if not outright appreciation, at least serious consideration.
Viv decided her favorite was a piece called Red White—a huge painting by Ellsworth Kelly, with a single bright red shape on a white background. When Charlotte asked what she liked
about it, Viv shrugged and said, “Well, I’ve always liked red. And that thing in the middle reminds me of a pair of red shorts
Vince had when he was little. He always looked so cute in them, with his stick legs and scraped-up knees.”
Margaret was attracted to two works by Jasper Johns. The first, titled Map and painted with broad, seemingly hurried brushstrokes of blue, red, yellow, and orange, bore a rough resemblance to a map
of the United States, but with the borders blurred and overlapping.
The second, False Start, with chaotic, sharp-edged splotches of blue, red, yellow, gray, white, and orange, also had words for the colors stenciled atop the splotches but almost never in the same color as the word.
Margaret wasn’t sure what all that meant, but she liked the bright, happy colors.
Though she wouldn’t have said so for fear of offending Charlotte, she really did find them somewhat childlike—but that was what she liked most about them.
There was a playfulness to them, the sort of unbridled enthusiasm that usually fades with age or becomes buried by disappointments.
Bitsy’s appreciation of Johns was more nuanced.
“He’s a trickster, trying to confuse our brains by painting the word in a different color, forcing us to look twice to make
sure we got it right. Or a joker,” she said, leaning closer to study the canvas, “a naughty boy who scribbles on walls because
he knows he can get away with it. Or maybe a philosopher? Challenging us to confront the fact that borders are just arbitrary
lines marked out by somebody who woke up one day and decided to put them there. Or possibly all three. Hard to say.”
She took two steps backward, taking in both canvases.
“Whatever else he may be, he’s certainly confident.” She turned her head left and right, looking at other works by other artists.
“They all are, don’t you think?”
Margaret turned in a circle, scanning the walls, realizing Bitsy was right. No matter the mood, message, palette, or technique,
every canvas in the room exuded confidence, as if not one of the artists ever doubted himself or questioned his right to be
there.
What must that feel like?
Time passed quickly. They hadn’t quite made it through all the rooms before Bitsy regretfully reminded them they should start
heading back.
“The school bus, remember? And you never know about traffic on the parkway.”
Viv decided she’d better visit the bathroom again before they left. Bitsy joined her. Margaret and Charlotte went to explore
the last gallery together. There was a small painting in the corner, about the size of a piece of paper. Charlotte walked
directly to it, bypassing the other pieces. Margaret followed.
The background made Margaret think of sour milk, curdled and grayish.
The foreground had splotches of color, predominantly red, and myriad black slashes that, depending on how you looked at them, might have been disembodied faces, severed limbs, or your imagination.
In the lower right corner, also in black, was a small, sharp, arrogantly confident signature—“L. Ahlgren.”
Charlotte stared at the canvas for a long time, as she had the others. Though Margaret had never seen that expression on her
face before, she recognized it. Ahlgren had worn the same look when he watched Charlotte walk away—a covetous, hungry, and
lustful gaze, burning with desire for a thing beyond his grasp.
Margaret suddenly understood why they had come to the gallery.
That would have been the moment—just the two of them, the painting, and the empty room—for Margaret to stand next to her,
eyes on the canvas instead of Charlotte’s face, and quietly ask, “How do you know him?” By which she would mean, “Why do you know him?”
But she didn’t.
When a friendship is new, precious, and perfect, sometimes there are things you’d rather not know.